Live data from Hacker News

EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

protocol.com

571–580 of 645 posts

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#571
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are starting to corner the market and are able to use your leverage to block competitors in a way that threatens to undermine their business, then the EU (and to an extend the USA) will regulate you. I can flip your question around and ask "should you have the right to play dirty?". Which is what Apple has been doing, there's exactly zero good reason to not license out access to the protocol. I don't own Apple…

Apple has APIs for iMessage: https://register.apple.com/messages You can even build a REST endpoint for Apple to invoke when your business receives a message from a user: https://register.apple.com/resources/messages/msp-rest-api/m... Where's the playing dirty and undermining businesses part?

Wait, there must be more to it. If this is open to the competition to build on, what exactly is the EU forcing Apple to open up?

I'm too lazy to research why exactly Microsoft can't use this API to interface with iMessage and instead opting for a half-baked bluetooth solution, but there must be some hurdle.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#572
post #334
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are starting to corner the market and are able to use your leverage to block competitors in a way that threatens to undermine their business, then the EU (and to an extend the USA) will regulate you. I can flip your question around and ask "should you have the right to play dirty?". Which is what Apple has been doing, there's exactly zero good reason to not license out access to the protocol. I don't own Apple…

> "should you have the right to play dirty?" is Apple playing dirty in this scenario? and if it is, then what exactly is stopping regulators from improving SMS thus making Apple's position moot?

Regulators can't improve SMS, they aren't tech companies or telcos.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#573
post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to disable cookies. I want to be able to log in to things, and I'm not happier if the site uses localstorage instead of cookies to track me. The GDPR doesn't forbid using cookies, by the way. If cookies are used to remember that you logged in using a session cookie, or remember the state of a shopping cart, or stuff like that, no warning is necessary. It's a law which requires consent to tracking, not co…

GDPR doesn’t say anything really about cookies, actually. I think you meant ePrivacy. Fact is most popups inform you about cookie use but don’t give you an option to do jack. And what makes you believe they’re ePrivacy compliant? I’ll bet you 90% of those sites, even when well intentioned, pollute you with tracking cookies anyways. Edit: by the way no modern website uses cookies to maintain your shopping cart, and in…

> GDPR doesn’t say anything really about cookies, actually. I think you meant ePrivacy.

I meant GDPR. It's the reason why websites have to get consent if they want to track you. I believe you're right that it doesn't mention cookies though, I don't believe it cares about what technology is used for tracking.

> Edit: by the way no modern website uses cookies to maintain your shopping cart, and instead of relying on a persistent credential cookie

That's what I meant. You store some unique ID on the client in a cookie, then you have a shopping cart database on the back-end. I didn't mean to imply that the cart items are stored in the cookie, just to distinguish the persistent shopping cart use-case from the logging in to a user account use-case.

> you could just use a password manager to expedite login and be more secure overall.

I do this. I still want to be logged in for a while.

> Finally, “private” mode on most browsers contains cookies to short lived session cookies within the tab lifespan.

I know. Would you find it very convenient if your browser always acted as if you were in private mode and didn't keep you logged in for longer than the lifespan of the tab? No? Neither would I.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#574
post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to turn off cookies, I want to be able to log in to things. And the cookie technology isn't the problem, tracking is; if the tracking happens locally using localstorage instead of cookies, I haven't gained anything. The law didn't force pop-ups anywhere. Some companies chose to put pop-ups on their websites.

Tracking happens everywhere you take your phone. Bluetooth beacons, apps grabbing data, etc. The laws don't stop it. They just force it to change shape. It can be stopped by careful consumption.

So let's get laws which stop those kinds of non-consensual tracking too.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about this too. At least now I have fairly decent confidence that when I send an iMessage to someone, Apple protects their identity to whatever standard they have. Whatever trust I put in Apple, at least it's a single point of failure. What happens if interoperability is enforced and messages have to be end-to-end encrypted? Wouldn't that mean that any side-loaded Android app would have to be able to get…

The protocol is just registering a public key for each device to the server-side directory. A device-specific private key is generated and kept client-side on every device that logs in to iMessage.

Of course, that makes sense. So you could revoke the key for each app individually.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#577
post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like users thinking imessage is shit because of third party clients. If those are the concerns against forcing them to open it, they shall force them now! I mean, lol... > Or taking away an app devs right to restrict how and where their app is used. You have no inherent right over how imessage is restricted. I mean, by what right or authority do you even get to even discuss forcing how a free(!) app is restricted o…

> Right comes from law Absolutley not true. The law codifies what is already true with respect to rights but the law also fails to codify rights as with womens rights and involuntary servitude, women and black people didn't suddenly gain rights when laws were passed, they've always had those rights except the law and society failed to recognize that until some point. Law or not there are fundamental and inalienable t…

>Absolutley not true. The law codifies what is already true with respect to rights but the law also fails to codify rights as with womens rights and involuntary servitude, women and black people didn't suddenly gain rights when laws were passed, they've always had those rights

Nope. They got them when those laws were passed.

You might think that they always "should have had" those rights, which is valid, but different from "always had them".

But they absoltely didn't have them, and if they attempted to exercize them as if they had them, they'd be ignored, prevented, beaten up, or worse.

>Yes and if EU wants to do any number unfair or dowright evil things they can, it is that simple. What is your point, did I dispute the simplicity?

Yes, they could. You could perhaps argue morals (based on what? Your take of what's "unfair" and "downright evil"? Because I'm a European and I don't find this law unfair at all), and that could be discussed.

But you didn't discuss morals, you wrote "by what right or authority". Well, they have the right and the authority, so?

>I was talking about what consumers what and what service is being offered by Apple and the inherent unfairness towards one group of consumers and favoritism towards non-american electronic makers and developers.

Sorry, but if you come here to sell something, you better sell it on our terms and under EU laws. If you don't want to do that, you can always opt to not sell it.

Also, you don't know what "consumers want" in general. Did you ask consumers if they want to keep Messages closed?

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder

It would only be a bill of attainder if it used arbitrary characteristics not relevant to the stated purpose of the bill to target specific companies. The definition cited is not arbitrary in that sense - it targets large companies in specific markets, and there's an obvious rational connection with the stated purpose.

I believe that both comment are trying to say that:

- Google and Apple must do X => unconstitutional

- All Companies bigger than X with chat-like apps and an app store and a near-oligopoly OS must do X => probably constitutional

- All Companies such that (proceed to list dozen of random characteristics meant to only ever apply to Google and Apple ) must do X => probably unconstitutional

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, I respectfully disagree, I'm a firm believer You have proposed no mehcanism to keep monopolies in check. You are a firm beliver in what? > giants that have the monopoly move way faster than governments So governments should be even more agressive and disproportionate to be effevtive? That is the inevitable conclusion of your argument.

The conclusion of my argument is that regulations disincentive competition and that’s why you end up with monopolies, so keep regulations at minimum.

> regulations disincentive competition and that’s why you end up with monopolies,

Seriously? There was no regulation on search, so how did google become a monopoly?

Post reply on HN